On Thursday the Golden State Warriors won their fourth National Basketball Association championship in the last eight years. A four-time championship team can be characterized as dynastic, and I despise overdogs. But I root for the Warriors. For one thing, this time around they were underdogs. For another, they’re the…

On Saturday the Washington Post ran a feature story on a Georgia woman who, in the reporter’s words, “is a case study in what [Trumpism] is becoming.” The main clue: her online name is Burnitdown. I was grateful this wasn’t another article in which the reporter hectors us coastal liberals…

It’s primary day in California. For once there are no propositions on the ballot — hooray! And I don’t expect any surprise winners for statewide office. But I am interested to see how the recall of Chesa Boudin goes. Boudin is San Francisco’s district attorney (a position once held by…

I should be in New Jersey today. But I’m not. A few months ago a first cousin once-removed announced plans to hold a family celebration this coming weekend. It was a chance to see each other after three years of (mostly) pandemic-related separation. My plan was to start in New…

My youngest first cousin — let’s call him Bert — committed suicide recently. I was shocked, but shouldn’t have been. Bert was the product of a contentious marriage between my Aunt Venom and a clothing store owner who, she learned on their wedding night, was gay but willing (for a…

Risk managers have to understand their employer’s risk appetite, which consulting juggernaut PricewaterhouseCoopers defines as “the amount of risk an organization is willing to accept in pursuit of strategic objectives.” Risk appetite does not have to be consistent across organizational functions. When UC Berkeley faculty members wanted to go to…

Last week my niece earned a masters degree, so The Fabulous Wife and I flew to Arizona to attend her graduation. We were honored to be there. Her two-year program gave her marketable skills, but more importantly, it completed her transformation into an adult. That word — adult — is…

Three years late, I’ve decided to wade into the controversy over the New York Times’s 1619 Project, whose goal is to “reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of the United States’ national narrative.” …

This week marks four years since I retired from UC Berkeley. Every time I reflect on it I experience that paradoxical sense of time: it feels as if I left ages ago — and just yesterday. I still think about work occasionally, and not just when UC Berkeley’s in the…